[Comment] Offline: America—the Fourth World

October 11, 2017

The Lancet 390, 10103 (2017)

Author: Richard Horton

In her compelling account of the 2016 US Presidential election (What Happened, Simon and Schuster), Hillary Clinton invokes a powerful metaphor to express her concerns for the health of America’s democracy. She argues that a body politic needs a strong immune system to survive. The elements of that immune protection are facts and reason. But “our immune system had been slowly eroded over years”. Democratic institutions of “the greatest country in the world” became vulnerable to attack. Americans must “heal our democracy”.